**No spoilers, but I don’t want to psychologically affect your future viewing of the movie if/when you do see it. Read on with caution.

For weeks leading up to the release of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo I had been stalking my favorite movie theatre’s website waiting for pre-sale tickets to become available. Finally, this week I found tickets for a showing last night – a day earlier than the national release of the movie! While this isn’t a movie review blog by any means, I thought I’d share my thoughts.

First, I think it must be incredibly difficult to capture all of the raw emotion that’s available in the book version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. It’s an incredible story with multi-faceted characters that are hard to depict in a movie.

Daniel Craig as Mikael Blomkvist was great. Craig did quite an attractive job (double meaning!) playing the part of the dashing journalist. However, the opening credits did remind me of a Bond movie, which seemed out of place for the movie. The music on the other hand was perfect. Big ups to Trent Reznor and company for putting together a killer soundtrack. The music did not distract from the action at all. New version of “Immigrant Song” by Led Zepplin? Yes please.

I liked Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander, but I didn’t love her. Truthfully, I thought she looked more hard-core in all of the print ads she did for the part than she actually did in the movie. Lisbeth is supposed to be filled with hatred because of all of the abuse she has undergone throughout her life, but I felt like Mara’s version of hatred was more of a blank stare.

Even though the movie was 2.5 hours long, I would have really liked some deeper character development. I felt bad for the other people in the audience who may not have read the book and would be cheated out of knowing the real backstory of some of the characters. I think they could have cut out the solid chunks of time where Mara is naked (holy crap, there was a lot of sex in that movie) to really delve into some history.

Least favorite part: they switched up quite a few things in the story to save time or whatever it was they thought was a good idea. You’ll see what I mean when you see it. Maybe I’m just too critical. I remember feeling the same way when I saw the first Harry Potter movie but I can understand that when adapting a book into a screenplay, some concessions can/will be made. We’ll just never know if Larsson would have approved of the changes…

Side note: I’ve read the book twice – once in book form and once as an audiobook. When they were describing the really dark parts, I felt more uncomfortable listening to the audiobook description than when I actually read the words. I felt similarly damaged after leaving the theater as well. It seems too real when you hear or see it rather than read it.

Overall – the movie was good!, but I would really suggest reading the book. If you’re a big fan of literary adventure, nothing beats the description and imagery that Stieg Larsson paints in the Millennium Series.

Have you ever gotten a message from someone that you weren’t expecting? Maybe a passive-aggressive message while you were at work that made your heart skip a beat from being blind-sided? Welcome to my Monday – and Mondays are “blah” to begin with…ugh.

I automatically assume that everyone who has reached my age will be as appropriate and professional as I would like to be. However, sometimes I need to remind myself that not everyone has reached that point in their lives and I must respond as the person I want to be (read: not a child). It’s so frustrating to get such a jolting email in the middle of my work day while I have 83,248 other things to do. I sent a very respectful and well-thought-out response, so there’s nothing else I can do at this point. Good thing I have a counseling center appointment tomorrow.

To make my day better though, I found the above Natalie Dee comic. All of her stuff is so funny. Check it out 🙂

Have you ever had anyone send you a passive-aggressive message that you weren’t expecting?